Harvest Moon

Today at E3 I went to play the new Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories on iOS at the Natsume booth.
The entire iOS demo took me six minutes to play through. Walking to the booth took me considerably longer.
I tapped on locations ...

The Harvest Moon series is coming to Wii U and PC for the first time with the upcoming Seeds of Memories, developer Natsume announced today. Seeds of Memories draws from the almost 20 years old original, "to evoke the feeling...

Courtesy of XSEED Games[Update: The contest has ended and the winner is projectnew! Congratulations!]
Story of Seasons is now available on Nintendo 3DS in North America, and we're celebrating its release with an awesome giveaway. The lovely fo...

Mar 31 //
Brittany Vincent
Story of Seasons (Nintendo 3DS)Developer: MarvelousPublisher: XSEED GamesReleased: March 31, 2015MSRP: $39.99
The alternative moniker isn’t indicative of a “reboot” of the games or anything like that, however. It simply represents the fact that the Harvest Moon name has changed hands from previous publisher Natsume to XSEED Games. Developer Marvelous has crafted a game that’s much more deserving of the title than Natsume’s recent effort Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, and fans have something meaty and entertaining to look forward to within.
But first, a bit of a history lesson. Harvest Moon's life began on the Super Nintendo, where it was known as Bokujō Monogatari, which roughly translates to "Farm Story." It was a novelty then as it is now: a game where you spend your days taking care of cows and harvesting crops as the seasons gently roll through spring, summer, fall, and winter. The goal, ultimately, is to build a house, woo a girl (it was always a girl in the early days), and settle down into a peaceful, pastoral existence.
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Story of Seasons is an interesting amalgamation of what made these games exciting upon their descent into western culture interesting back when I was younger and continues to make them addictive in a modern setting. As it happens, there’s also an astronomical amount of things to do. This has to be the biggest, most sprawling farm sim game related to Harvest Moon I’ve seen so far, in terms of both management aspects and activities to perform. Harvest Moon: A New Beginning is similar in many ways, but it seems Story of Seasons has expanded on it significantly.
Luckily the beginning of the game isn’t so complicated, only offering you the chance to figure out who you want to use as your avatar throughout your adventure. It’s good to begin with something you can manage that’s as simple as deciding who you want to be. You can choose to play as a male or female farmer, both tasked with heading to the sleepy Oak Tree Town, in dire need of a skilled farmer to care for one of the town’s sprawling ranches.
You’re neither skilled nor a farmer when you start out, but that’s what makes Story of Seasons so exciting: throwing caution to the wind and heading out to pursue a new profession in an unknown place to help a town in need. There are plenty of other farmers in town to help show you the ropes and ensure you know all there is to know before you plant your first seeds. Together, all four of you can hopefully restore Oak Tree Town’s Trade depot back to its former glory, with the right amount of crops and care.
There’s a long road ahead of you, though, and a ridiculous amount of training required before you can even set foot in your own farm. It’s off to Eda, longtime resident of Oak Tree town, to act as your mentor as she prepares you to plant, water, and harvest crops, raise farm animals, how to use and upgrade tools used around the farm, and important information like your Health and Stamina. It’s a wealth of information that can feel like a slog to get through at first, and can feel overwhelming at first. This is absolutely not a fast-moving game. You’ll need some patience to take in all of the little things that you’ll find truly add up by the end of your farming internship, but sticking to it feels extremely rewarding.
That’s where Story of Seasons tends to differ from Natsume’s “traditional” Harvest Moon games the most. Rather than arriving at a farm and getting started immediately, you’re given extensive training before allowed to set foot in a farm that’s in any way yours. Even your starter area is adjacent to Eda’s, as if the folks at Marvelous don’t quite trust you with your own area yet, supplanting new features and other additions as you go along.
Unlike similar titles in the past, you’ve got more to worry about than if you watered your crops for the day or if your character is looking a bit haggard while tending to crops out in the rain. Your character’s Health and Stamina play central roles in keeping your farm efficient and productive, and there are plenty of ways to satisfy both requirements beyond simply going to bed. For instance, you can eat a small meal, head to a hot spring, or rest in order to ensure your health is restored, but losing it is another deal entirely.
This time around even if you do something as small as walk outside during a torrential downpour, you’ll see your health drop, just as you would if you decided to stay up late in-game. In this, it lends a more realistic lilt to farming life. Along with the stamina points, represented by the number of hearts your farmer has on-screen, it communicates the message that farmers are still fragile, often weary human beings who need time and training to work themselves to the bone and keep themselves healthy. Luckily, the two difficulty modes (Normal and Seedling) offer options for players looking to keep things light.
Seedling Mode finds stamina consumption levels lowered by 50%, which makes for a completely different experience when starting out, as do the positive multipliers on store items, prices, stock, and more. New players may consider Seedling Mode as a viable option when becoming acquainted with Story of Seasons, as there are alterations between that and Normal Mode that are indeed a boon for newbies looking to get started quickly and with fewer frustrations.
Speaking of making things easier, farming feels much more convenient than before. You can work with a 3x3 area when working with watering, planting, and the like, and you can hold down your action button while walking to continue with what you’re doing. If you want to water crops you can keep walking around. If you’re planting seeds, your character will scatter them in the air. It all feels quite intuitive. Controls work with you rather than against you. The only way you might falter is if you find yourself struggling with the in-game tasks constantly thrown at you, and the multitude of extra assignments available to take on.
Managing your farm becomes simpler the more you learn about doing it, but there are still several things to keep track of, including your farm house, animals, the crops you’re tending to, and special sheds that can be used to convert raw materials like dairy products and the like into useable food items like cheese or yogurt. You can make clothing, pottery, seasonings, engineer seeds and crops, and more at the Maker Sheds, all of which are extremely important when your farm is up and running proper. There’s a large variety of crops to keep up with as well, including special Super Mario Bros. crops like Super Mushrooms and Fire Flowers. These are interesting, cheeky additions that feel right at home on the 3DS, and when you harvest Super Stars to ensure the crops you have remain fresh.
Aside from working on the farm, there are multiple interactions you’ll have with villagers and other NPCs. Some of these can lead to special relationships that can end in marriage and children, and others will give you gifts, interact with you, and befriend you as you make your way as a farmer in Oak Tree Town. These help keep things light, but also act as reprieves from the toil of day-to-day proceedings of planting seeds, harvesting crops, exporting goods for sale, and ensuring your farm remains profitable. Much like real life, offering a chance to interact with others, build relationships, and participate in events and activities beyond that of simple hard work provides several benefits. You’ll find as a player that you’ll appreciate these personable interactions as much as the satisfaction of cultivating a successful farm.
Story of Seasons looks fantastic, feels great, and offers an overabundance of things to do and places to see. It’s a farmer’s paradise, though its almost excruciatingly slow tutorial and internship will take a large amount of patience to get through if you’re to see all the game has to offer, and there is a lot. Expect to clear your calendar for this excellent portable farming sim, as you’ll be spending several hours turning a profit to impress the townsfolk of Oak Tree Town, your future husband or wife, or even your friends playing alongside you.

For every sim, there is a seasonAs a fan of both casual and intermediate simulation and farming games, the Harvest Moon series has always been a mainstay for me. I grew up on several different iterations of the Natsume-published entries beginning with Harve...

Story of Seasons takes root in North America on March 31, XSEED Games announced today.
The Nintendo 3DS farming simulator is the latest entry in the Bokujo Monogatari series, which previously was localized under the...

Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley launches November 4, Natsume announced today.
The 3DS farming simulator marks the first occasion Natsume has internally developed a Harvest Moon title. All previous entries in the series came as localizations of Marvelous' Bokujō Monogatari franchise, the latest of which is coming west this winter as Story of Seasons.
Natsume [Twitter]

In a recent issue of Famitsu magazine, more details were revealed about Marvelous' new game that combines the popular anime/manga franchise PoPoLoCrois and Harvest Moon, PoPoLoCrois Farm Story. PoPoLoCrois Farm Story is to be...

PoPoLoCrois will be fusing with Harvest Moon for PoPoLoCrois Farm Story. The game will feature several characters from the PoPoLoCrois series, and the protagonist will be Prince Pietro. In addition to command-based RPG battle...

Just the other day I brought you the "trailer" for XSEED's Story of Seasons, where many of you were concerned with what's going on with Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. It looks like Natsume's finally come out with an official...

Story of Seasons and Natsume's Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley (full story on that debacle here) are undoubtedly two games that I'm looking forward to play on my 3DS the most, but with trailers like these, it's as if XSEED jus...

After that strange Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons debacle that Kyle so kindly set straight for us, it's good to see more details emerging regarding the actual branded Harvest Moon release, The Lost Valley.
The game's E3 inform...

Jun 06 //
Kyle MacGregor
A little history on the series and the company behind it:
Bokujō Monogatari was initially created by a company by the name of Pack-In-Video, which merged with Victor Entertainment, thereby becoming Victor Interactive Software. Marvelous Entertainment later bought them up, as corporations are wont to do, then merged with AQ Interactive to form Marvelous AQL.
Marvelous and its predecessors had a relationship with Natsume for many years. Marvelous handled development and publishing in Japan, and Natsume put them out in America under the name Harvest Moon. And so things went until that association became a little more complex.
In 2004, XSEED was born. XSEED serves as Marvelous AQL's subsidiary and North American publishing label. It does the very thing that Marvelous entrusted Natsume with, bringing Japanese games to western audiences. That said, Natsume still handled American distribution for Bokujō Monogatari until now.
Well, sort of. Bokujō Monogatari has a spin-off series called Rune Factory. Publishing duties for these titles in America were passed back and forth between XSEED and Natsume up until the launch of Rune Factory 4 last year, and the subsequent bankruptcy of the studio behind the games, Neverland Co.
It seems like Marvelous is no longer in need of Natsume's assistance, though. Instead, it's looking to use its in-house team going forward, at least for the time being. Why use a middleman for a job you're perfectly capable of doing yourself?
"We are definitely interested in pushing the 'Marvelous' brand as much as possible," XSEED vice president Ken Berry revealed in an interview last year. Though Berry's group publishes titles from a number of Japanese companies, in 2013 XSEED was brought under the umbrella of Marvelous USA in the hopes of unifying and expanding operations. Part of that seems to involve localizing more Marvelous-developed titles than in years past. And Story of Seasons is a prime example of this.
Of course, that's certainly a blow to Natsume. It's being cut out of a lucrative equation; Bokujō Monogatari has sold close to ten million copies worldwide. Publishing Harvest Moon games must have provided a nice cash flow for Natsume. And then Marvelous AQL suddenly turned off the taps.
This reminds me of that old adage: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Well, Natsume has been given a lot of fish over the years. Perhaps it's time the company pulled one out of the river by itself. Natsume owns the Harvest Moon name. What's stopping it from making one? Well, nothing really. It may seem a little odd, but it's perfectly within their rights.
It seems like Natsume had a decent amount of notice that this was going to happen. According to Siliconera, the publisher opened a new office in Tokyo last year, and it's this same studio that's been developing Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley since early 2013.
So that, as best as we can tell, is how we got here, with muddy waters and two sets of Harvest Moon games. But really, who are we to complain about more of a good thing?

A rose by any other nameA lot of folks seem pretty confused about what's going on with Harvest Moon. And that's perfectly understandable, because it's a tad complicated. Please allow me to try to explain the situation.
XSEED recently announced a far...

Natsume has announced its complete E3 roster for next week, and while it's got a few high points, it's not impressing me too much. It's a strange mishmash of handheld games and iOS releases with a stray PSP game and Wii U pro...

Well, that didn't take long. Shortly after teasing a trio of projects for Nintendo platforms, Natsume has announced it's bringing Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley to Nintendo 3DS in North America.
Here's the synopsis:
In Harves...

[Update: One of the games is Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley for Nintendo 3DS]
Natsume will reveal three new games for Nintendo platforms at E3 2014, the Harvest Moon distributor divulged while detailing its plans for...

Call it stereotypical of me if you will, but I'm a huge fan of Harvest Moon and its spinoffs -- even the wannabe games. That's why I'm so excited to see Story of Seasons releasing via XSEED this upcoming winter. After 18 year...

Did You Know Gaming's latest video is all about Harvest Moon. One of the biggest things I learned here is that the series started life after series creator Yasuhiro Wada moved to Tokyo from the countryside. He would regularl...

Get ready for more farm fun as the latest issue of Famitsu has revealed that a new Harvest Moon will come to the 3DS in Japan in February. ANN (scan at 0taku) says that the new game Bokujō Monogatari: Tsunagaru Shin...

Hometown Story is coming to market on October 22 for Nintendo 3DS in North America, Natsume has announced.
A simulation role-playing game directed by Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada, the title features a premise simil...

Did you know cows can have explosive diarrhea? I didn't know that until I saw this ad for Harvest Moon: A New Beginning. Thanks for enlightening us with this informational video, Marvelous AQL!
[Thanks, Dave!]

Last year, former Destructoid editor Chad Concelmo and I spoke with Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada about his latest game, codenamed "Project Happiness." Hoping to take the lifestyle sim to the next level, he envisioned a ...

Attending E3 has given me the chance to try out some games I normally wouldn't think of picking up - Rune Factory 4 being one of them. I always considered the Rune Factory series to be a Harvest Moon imitator until I gave it ...

Harvest Moon for the Game Boy Color is coming to the Nintendo 3DS eShop in North America this week, Natsume has announced.
The second title in the prolific farming sim role-playing game series, Harvest Moon GB was initia...

Mar 10 //
Taylor Stein
Gaming celebration with a personal twist
The trip down retro lane is a cherished monthly spectacle among my siblings and I. Every few weeks we put our adult lives on hold to relive the games from our youth. If there is any day that we truly unite as a family, it's while bonding over the classics. As painfully sappy as that sounds, videogames have always acted as a supernatural Band-Aid, mending all pissed off sentiments and sibling-based grudges.While we each were transformed into instant videogame buffs through the allure of the NES, many of our greatest memories reside with the N64. During our version of Old School Day, we welcome the titles that have contributed to the process of shaping us into the people we are today. Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, Star Fox, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Smash Bros., Pokemon Stadium, Rampage, Banjo-Kazooie and Yoshi's Story just to name a few, form the framework of the evening. Those titles served as the backbone of my childhood so it's rather fitting. Each time we get together, we sprinkle in a few different games, maximizing the fun output while minimizing the risk of getting bored through repetition, if that's even possible.Over the course of two to six hours of pizza-induced noshing, old school gaming, and admittedly potent languor, we've typically covered the spectrum of emotions from anger-filled multiplayer sessions, to heartwarming regard in response to a favorite cut scene. In diplomatic fashion, we take turns choosing the next entrant to revitalize our nostalgia, but in reality, any choice is a good one when you're playing favorite games amongst family and friends.
Old School Day rocks! Still not convinced?
With the next generation of consoles on the horizon, you may be hesitant to turn back the hands of time, to accept the glory of Old School Day. There's no way that earlier generations can compete from a graphical standpoint and not all of the oldies were auditory masterpieces, yet despite these technological inferiorities, the games that defined past generations exude a certain charm that often propels them into superior status. Reliving them for yourself is almost certain to conjure up sentiments such as, "Why don't they make games like this anymore?" rather than, "Yikes, I'll stick with the Xbox." Purchasing the titles through XBLA or PSN is technically a viable option, but summoning the warm feelings of familiarity is that much better in its authentic form. Re-experiencing the definitive moments of a simpler time, a period when eating vegetables and finishing homework were the main opponents of happiness, is satisfying on multiple levels. For one, rekindling ancient memories is enormously rewarding. Exploring old saved files and realizing that wow, I can't believe I actually collected all of those stars, puzzle pieces, coins, or heart pieces is always a heart-warming, ego-boosting find. I recall loading up my saved game from Harvest Moon 64. . . I had ten in-game years worth of gameplay on one file. That's more virtual years than I had spent on Earth at that time; how much would that achievement/trophy be worth? Equally as shocking is the realization that some aspects of older gaming were much more difficult than memory would serve. Conker's Pocket Tales on Gameboy Color was one such instance of perplexity. While I nearly finished the game as a kid and don't recall any Ninja Gaiden-like frustrations, with all my might I can barely get past the first level to this day. I must have had the child-like reflexes of a ninja or at least that's what I keep telling myself.
Conker-based inadequacies aside, dusting off your Atari 2600, Dreamcast, or other old console is guaranteed to fulfill your sense of humor as well. Things that were badass in the 1980s or 1990s are often hilarious now. Turok 64 death screams are absolutely priceless, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater has musical accoutrements that will transport you into the late '90s punk scene, and Gex 64 makes in-game references to the X-Files, Poltergeist, and Full House. Who needs a time machine when a gateway to your childhood is right within reach? The essence of forgotten trends and declining fads aids in sweetening any excursion into the past of gaming through hands-on reminiscence and a healthy dose of gut-busting laughter.
Beyond the arenas of personal achievement, hilarity, and frustration, hopping on the symbolic DeLorean in the name of Old School Day allows us to respect the pioneers within the industry, those instances of brilliance that set in motion what we now take for granted as technological commodities. Videogames as a medium have come so very far.
What started as a hodgepodge of pixels and simplicity has evolved into visual, narrative-driven masterpieces easily on par with cinema. Gaming may have been an obscure hobby decades ago, but whether you adhere to the pastime personally or not, it is impossible to ignore its significance on an economic, cultural, and political scale. The current discussions about videogames and gun control are a testament to that.
The industry boasts a powerful presence within the global landscape but also within my own life. I adopted Old School Day as reminder of why I became a gamer in the first place: the fun times with friends and family, the lessons learned from macho protagonists, the ability to step into the shoes of countless characters, and the satisfaction felt from saving the world, galaxy, or universe. If you find yourself in a place of gaming stagnancy, my hope is that after reading this, you'll incorporate a bit of Old School Day into your life and join me in celebrating retro gaming on a regular basis.What are your favorite older games? Do you ever take a break from new releases to play titles from the past?[Note: If you own Pokémon Stadium 2, follow my instructions without restraint for guaranteed laughs. Visit the mini games section and select Streaming Stampede. Make sure to play with the company of an easy or normal com and watch the stupidity ensue. Enjoy!]
Image Sources: [1][2][3][4][5]

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